Krause Springs – Austin's best swimming hole

It was a hot day, and the Housewives of Travis County were on a mission. Swimming was the goal, and on a day like this Krause Springs was the perfect destination.

They call themselves housewives, this set, but it’s really a posse of unemployed professionals, welders, artists and cooks (okay, and one real housewife) who were tired of sitting home feeling sorry for themselves, and ready to grab unemployment by the horns and rock its little world. Joblessness in Austin is at 6.1%, and some folks are tired of constantly looking for work and never finding any. Hence, swimming!

Ten of us trooped out to Krause Springs, a huge swimming hole in Spicewood Texas (less than an hour’s drive from Austin). The water there is cool and clear, flowing from deep springs into a shallow, kid-friendly pool. From there it drops over mossy boulders and into the grotto– a deep, shaded pond surrounded by tall cypress trees.

Both pools were full of people: young punks preening on beach towels, college kids with cheap beer, mothers and grandmothers sipping lemonades in the shade, dads with camcorders, kids careening through the air on the rope swing. And us, a bunch of noisy 30-somethings with floaty toys, coolers and face paint (neon pink!).

the upper level swimming pool…

…and the grotto

There’s more to Krause Springs than just swimming all day (though the swimming is more than enough). Up above is the Butterfly Garden, a beautiful oasis of foliage and water with huge hanging windchimes that, if you sit under them long enough, are guaranteed to lull you into a meditative trance.

There are also camping areas for the road warriors. Although it’s a ways outside of Austin, I highly recommend stopping here for a night or two: $10 gets you a shady campsite and all the swimming you can handle. This is one of the nicest, most beautiful campgrounds I’ve seen so far (and I’ve seen a few). It’s not hard to imagine living here.

In fact there’s a lot of history in these waters. The springs have been inhabited for a long, long time: first used by Native Americans, they were bought by a white man in the 1800s and quickly became Spicewood’s favorite picnic spot. The area was later used as a quarry to build the Mansfield Dam: workers lived here and pulled rocks from the grotto. According to a Krause Springs employee, when the Depression hit, the quarry workers found themselves unemployed. Many of them stayed here, living in the cypress trees and trapping squirrels for dinner, until construction on the dam resumed. Mr. Krause bought the springs in the 1950s, and slowly this became one of the best hidden spots in the Austin area.

Somehow I didn’t get a single photo of the beautiful Texans I was swimming with (it probably had a little to do with how much fun we were having), but I photographed just about everything else there. These are some of my favorites; the rest can be found here.